


flowers grow out of my grave

by softestrichie



Category: IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, Slow Burn, he's absolutely head over heels for eddie, pure fluff, richie has adhd and can talk to plants
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-11
Updated: 2018-09-05
Packaged: 2019-05-21 00:25:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 18,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14905032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/softestrichie/pseuds/softestrichie
Summary: the only ones who ever listened to richie were the daisies in his backyard. that was, until eddie kaspbrak meets him on the school field.





	1. the oak tree behind the bike sheds

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> richie tozier is different.

Had you asked, Richie Tozier would have told you that plants were easier to talk to than people.

He talked to them rather a lot, sometimes with his mouth but mostly with his eyes. Under the beech tree at the bottom of his garden. Richie liked to lie there, letting his legs kick freely and his hands twitch in the grass, and flash all the daisies a big, buck-toothed smile. They never smiled back, but always gave a little nod. Always just let him lay there like that. Smiling. 

That was the thing about plants, you see. Richie didn’t fit in with them anymore than he did with humans – and, dear god, that was saying something. He still stuck out like a sore thumb. Not green or leafy, no big, bright, funny-coloured petals. But the plants didn’t mind. They didn’t tell him to be quiet or sit still or go away, like humans did. They didn’t laugh at him and call him awful names. They didn’t ignore him. They just let Richie be Richie. And, really, that’s all he ever wanted. 

The peculiar thing about Richie and his plants, however, was that sometimes, they really could talk to him.  
He could smile and chatter at those daisies, under that beech tree, and they really would listen. They could say something back. Just for Richie. Not with a voice, like a human would use. But certainly respond.

He first discovered this when he was nine years old. At school. Henry Bowers beckoned him to the back of the bike sheds after one lunchtime, him and his friends. Richie didn’t know why he’d accepted. He hadn’t meant to. But his tongue and legs often had a ‘mind of their own’, as his mom would say. Naturally, Bowers had taken one, dirty look at him and made a lunge. He started hitting his head against the bike sheds – thud, thud, thud – and wouldn’t stop. After what felt like hours and a smash of his glasses, Richie’s eyes fell on the tree, just next to him. All gnarled, knobbly branches and grey leaves. He looked at it and found himself talking to it. Asking for its help, inside his head. And the tree answered.

What happened next seemed to go by in a second, although in reality it was rather slow. One, particularly sharp branch suddenly came lurching down from its pert position by the roof and made a swipe for Bowers’ head. A single but very nasty lash, sending his eyes all out of focus and his hands flying off of Richie’s head. 

He might have thought it was a daydream, or some astronomical coincidence. Richie might have completely let it go. Stayed lonely forever. But then it happened again. A different branch this time; shorter, but more curly and rough. Kicked out like one of Richie’s legs when he was feeling particularly restless. Got Bowers in the back (he’d been bent double, nursing his head), and his friends as well.  
Needless to say, Richie was very much safe from Henry Bowers and his friends for the next few months. 

And now, at the age of fifteen, he’d still lie under that beech tree. Happy to be with the daisies, happy to make them dance under the palm of his hand. If Richie had his plants, curling around the tips of his ears and shooting up at his heels, he didn’t need people. He didn’t need any of ‘em.

That was, until he met Eddie Kaspbrak.


	2. the dandelion on the school field

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> richie's having a rough morning. someone's noticed.

Richie thinks Eddie Kaspbrak is a little bit like one of his flowers. Quite small, but very bright. Not physically – just more of a sense. In Richie’s head, he’s covered in curly green leaves, and giant petals of pink and blue and yellow. He’s the biggest, most beautiful flower in the meadow. 

He came to this conclusion on the day he met Eddie. A very fateful Thursday in May. The very last day of loneliness. 

It had started out rather bad. Bad enough to wilt the front yard flowerbed, at least. Richie had woken up late, with a toothache (“I did tell you to go easy on the candy!”) and his head hanging upside down off the bed. Half-broken alarm clock screaming bloody murder and mother shouting his name from the foot of the staircase. Good morning Derry. 

“Richie Tozier, you get down here right now!”

“What’s the matter?!” he called, fumbling around for his glasses and only finding a pair of socks. He had a lot of those; yellow ones with pictures of boats and anchors, red ones with blue stars and smiley faces, green ones with purple grid patterns up to the toes. Richie liked things like that. Pictures and patterns made his brain buzz.

“You come here and tell me yourself.”

Once fully socked and covered in a backwards t shirt, Richie did do just that. His mother was stood in the kitchen, just in front of the spouting, broken sink his dad had given up trying to fix. Covered the floor in water. 

That wasn’t what she was so upset about, however. Richie could tell she was about something; hair all bushy and voice all shrill. Maggie usually talked to him in a soft voice, laced with ‘sugar’ and ‘sweetheart’ and ‘honey-bunny’. Knew his head was a bit sensitive. 

“Care to explain?” she said, in that funny voice again, and stuck out a hand. On the windowsill was a spider of dark soil and broken bits of plant pot. The window was cracked in the bottom left corner. Richie’s fingers started flapping against the kitchen table.

“Must have been those kids over the road, always throwing stuff,” he said very quickly. “I see them on the way home from school, shit tons of balls and frisbees and random stuff like shuttlecocks. Even caught ‘em throwing rocks about once, couple weeks back. That’s what would’ve happened. You can see from the placement of the crack, probably went over that bit of fence there. You see?”

Richie whipped his hand across very fast, miming the mystery object’s movement. His tongue was going a hundred miles an hour and Maggie’s eyes were whooshing about with his hands.

In reality, there were no rock-wielding children to blame. He’d gotten upset last night at the on-off-on-off lights and spurting sink whilst waiting for his macaroni cheese to finish, and all of a sudden his mom’s Boston fern went haywire. Whipping about like a madman, snakes of leaves firing themselves at the window, soil confetti all over the floor. That happened sometimes, when Richie had one of his meltdowns. Only time he wasn’t really in control. 

Maggie blinked, leaning back against the counter. “Slow down, Rich. Getting overexcited.”

He let out a deep, low breath. ‘Rich’ usually meant he was home safe and dry. 

“Yeah. Sorry.” Hopefully the kids across the road wouldn’t be grounded too long.

“That’s alright. Just get yourself to school, sugar. And switch your shirt around. S’on backwards, bright spark,” she’d giggled, waving him off and busying herself with a pot of tea. 

-

Richie’s morning didn’t get much better once he was in school. If anything, it had gotten worse. Could turn a whole lawn lemon-yellow. The teacher had asked him to read a passage from To Kill A Mockingbird in English and Richie hadn’t been able to get a word out. Words went all funny, brain went all noisy. His head shut down. A branch knocked on the back window of the class. 

Only at lunchtime did that teeny, tiny bud of hope raise its head. Peeking through the soil by barely an inch. Petals still curled in and leaves all minty-coloured. But there, nonetheless. And there, in the form of a face.  
To be more specific, Eddie Kaspbrak’s face. 

Richie had been sitting in his designated spot just in front of the birch trees. Reciting his To Kill a Mockingbird quotes to a dandelion with his eyes screwed shut, and eating a cheese-and-tomato sandwich. The little plant egged him on, as he poked his tongue between his huge front teeth and tried with all his might to remember. Yellow head nodding in encouragement. All for nothing, mind you. 

He’d been just about to give up and focus on something more interesting, maybe fidgeting with the straps of his backpack for a while or marker-penning a picture on his workbook, when he heard a funny noise. 

Well – a voice. Only really funny because it was within his vicinity; nobody liked hanging out at this end of the field. It was dark, more dirt and wilting flowers than grass and pink-white daisies. Only Richie saw the prettiness in that sort of thing. And, of course, nobody liked talking to Richie Tozier. Very funny indeed.

The voice belonged to Eddie Kaspbrak, standing just in front of him. The sun was behind his head and made his ears glow pinky-gold, and he was talking in this teeny-tiny voice. Nose very small and soft, like a cat’s, and eyes like a cartoon character’s. Richie almost thought it was a hallucination. 

“Hello? Can you hear me?”

He blinked. The dandelion vibrated in his fingers. “Sorry - what did you say?”

Eddie sighed, eyelashes doing an odd sort of swish that Richie couldn’t really describe. He felt a tickle deep in his tummy. “I asked if you were alright.”

“I’m peachy,” Richie said, looking a bit blank all of a sudden. His tongue felt very swollen, almost to the size of a Clementine, and his face very hot. He didn’t know why this particularly sunny boy wanted to talk to him. “Really, really good. Fantastic, actually. Far better than average. How are you? What’s your name – you got a name?”

He held his breath as his tongue felt even bigger, waiting for Eddie’s likely repulsed response. Really fucked it up now. The grass started to go stiff under his legs. 

But Eddie, much to his (pleasant) surprise, didn't run away. He didn't wrinkle his nose, or throw his head back and laugh. He just sat down. Next to Richie.  


“Yeah, I do. It’s Eddie,” he said, criss-crossing his freckly, slightly plump legs and eyeing Richie’s dandelion. “You were lookin’ a bit...out of it. Were you alright in English?”

Richie’s tummy dropped a little, and so did the dandelion. Bright, flowery head turning a watery colour. He fidgeted with it. “Absolutely amazing, Eddie. Eddie confetti, sit-down-on-the-settee. Was just reading my book.”

“That’s the thing. You sort of weren’t.” Eddie reached out to touch the dandelion, too, knocking his knuckle against Richie’s. Electricity jetted through the taller boy’s arm. He fought to keep a flower down – a daffodil, threatening to shoot right up under their hands – and looked at Eddie with wide eyes. 

“What? Aren’t I allowed to touch the flower?”

Richie’s heart slowed down a tiny bit, and his grip on the dandelion’s stem loosened. He could smell something very sweet, like strawberries. “Yeah. He’s just shy.”

Eddie craned his neck to get a proper look at the flower, and at Richie. Their knees touched. “I think you’re the only shy one.”

“Nuh-uh,” Richie said, with a snort. 

“Why didn’t you read your book then?”

He paused. Richie couldn't really think of a short answer to that. Or a long one, actually. 

“Because – because it’s boring. A fucking boring book. All books are boring. Flowers are a lot nicer.”

Eddie nodded, corners of his lips quirked and eyes very bright. The strawberry smell was coming from him, Richie concluded. Strawberries and sugar and honey. Nice.

“What’s your favourite kinda flower?”

Richie tensed. Different types of flowers to him were actually different, very unique little feelings. Each one was something very strong, from his heart. It almost seemed too personal. “None of your business.”

“Oh, come on! You haven’t even told me your name. And you say you’re not shy?!” Eddie exclaimed. There was a giggle in his voice, somewhere. Hiding in his throat. “Tell me your favourite and then I’ll leave you alone.”

With a sigh, Richie racked his brains. He decided he’d just pick a pretty, bright one, that others might like the look of. Something random. And the very first, very embarrassing flower that just so happened to spring to mind was...  
“Daffodil.”

Oh, shit. 

Eddie smiled, hopefully not picking up on the tiny, pink glimmer of Richie’s cheeks. “Sweet. It suits you,” he said quietly, whipping up his satchel and getting to his feet. The sun fell behind him again, just right, like it had before. Almost like a halo. 

Angel, angel, angel. 

“Well, nice to meetcha, Daffodil,” Eddie said brightly. Richie's head reeled. “But I’ll keep my end of the deal, see you around.” 

Richie really hoped Eddie Kaspbrak would see him around. Sit with him again, chat to him. Despite the tight chest and awkwardly crimson cheeks, he’d felt quite happy in his company. He didn’t want Eddie to forget him just yet. 

He walked home from school that night with his brain on fire. Eddie, Eddie, Eddie. Dragging his fingers along every bush he walked by, tiny clusters of baby's breath shooting out and leaves fluttering in a dance. Eddie was quite pretty, Richie thought. The flowers all seemed to agree. 

And, thank God, Eddie didn’t forget. For, the very next morning, three, golden daffodils grew outside his bedroom window.


	3. the tulip at the bottom of the garden

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> richie can't get eddie out of his head.

Eddie had a lot of friends.

Richie noticed this, over the next few days. He’d been thinking about him quite a lot since they met. Like he would a really bright, sparkling new comic book, or an action figure as a kid. Thought about his face, and the little ways it had twitched as he spoke or listened. 

He laid on his bed, on Thursday night, and pointed his finger up at the ceiling, imagining it was Eddie’s face. Tracing every freckle, drawing dot-to-dot between them. He could almost sense his glow, his warmth. 

Angel, angel, angel. 

Richie had felt a bit frightened of himself. The hibiscus next to his bed looked at him funny, tilting its head and tucking its leaves curtly. “I know,” he told it, dropping his finger and looking back with a guilty expression. “I know.”

It wasn’t until the Friday morning, that his little red steam train of Eddie-thoughts arrived at his friends. He’d been locking up his bike, very aware of Eddie’s nearby presence and peeking at him through his hair. Richie really wanted to talk to him again. 

Eddie was standing with two other people, which is what really threw him off. There was a girl, whose name escaped him, and a boy, who he identified as Stanley. Stanley Uris, a quiet kid who lived three houses down from him, and sometimes turned up at the door with boy scout popcorn. Perpetually-narrowed eyes and long, bony fingers. An orchid, Richie would say.

He’d come to Richie’s tenth birthday party – a barbecue he hadn’t really wanted. Quietly doing some colouring on the patio dining table and never straying past a single line. Richie had been quite impressed. He decided to impress him back.

He’d taken Stanley to the bottom of the garden, that evening, and shown him a purple tulip. Made it shoot right out of the dark, damp grass that grew near the trees and give him a tickle on the chin. Naturally, 9-year-old Stan Uris had been absolutely terrified, and gone running off to his mother. He cried for 30 minutes. 

Richie had cried too, actually. Only later, way after bedtime. He wished that Stan could have been his friend. 

Eddie seemed to have had much more luck with him, from the way they were both snorting with laughter that Friday. The smaller boy nodded and giggled every few seconds, hanging on to Stanley’s every word, and turning Richie’s ears a little bit pink. 

A daisy taps at the heel of his sneaker. 

He was just about to walk past, maybe cock his head to try and hear a little snippet of the conversation, when Richie all of a sudden didn’t need to. For Eddie was talking properly now, nice and loud and clear. And he was talking to him. 

“Hey, Daffodil!”

The daisy stood firm. Richie’s legs swayed slightly, as he looked up at the three of them. He hadn’t planned ahead for this. Talking to one person was difficult enough, with a tongue like his, let alone three.

(Let alone Eddie Kaspbrak.)

“Hiya, Eddie-spaghetti,” he said hoarsely. “Give-the-cat-a-petty. Pink-and-blue-confetti. Who’s - What’s shaking?”

Oh, fucking hell!

Eddie snickered quietly, but not in the bad way. The way that sort of made Richie want to laugh, too.

“Nothin’ much. Come over here, would you?”

Daisies were leaping up like wildfire, by now, under Richie’s shoes. He willed them to stop and clenched his teeth, walking a bit closer. He gave Stanley and the anonymous girl a nod, feeling a sprig of grass wind through the hole in his sneaker. 

Eddie brushed blondish-brown hair out of his face. “Stanley, Beverly, meet...”

“Richie,” he choked. Eddie gave him a grateful giggle. 

“Meet Richie. He’s funny and he likes daffodils.”

Richie could barely look at Stan and Beverly. His heart seemed to be beating hard enough to shake his eyes, making everything go blurry and filmy. The grass pulsed against his feet. “In – in a nutshell, yeah.”

Beverly grinned at him, as Stan said his nervous ‘hey, what’s up?’ She had curly orange hair and fat freckles either side of her nose. Her teeth were slightly crooked and her cheeks were pink. A red poppy, for sure. “Daffodils, huh?” she asked. 

Nice voice, Richie thought. Warm. He didn’t think she was a threat. Nor did the poppy creeping up under the shrubs, just behind her. “Daffodils, doll. Big, bright yellow ones.”

Eddie gave Beverly a smiley, crinkly-eyed look that Richie couldn’t describe. “Yellow. Cool. Well, I wanted to ask you something,” he said.

Richie’s hands started to twitch, and so did the daisies. Another curveball. “Yeah?”

Eddie hugged his French textbook into his chest, and tilted his head. There went his eyelashes again – itty bitty flutter. He looked like a mimosa plant, Richie thought drowsily. Shrinking violet. Cute. “Do you want to hang out later?”

Holy hell. 

Richie’s eyes glazed over for a moment, senses blipping. He thought there might be vines growing all over his brain, thick and full, and flowers blooming over every free inch. Every neurone crowned with bright pink petals and ruffed with green leaves. Eddie Kaspbrak really wants to...

“Hang out?” Richie repeated. “Like, on a washing line? Monkey bars?” 

Stanley Uris snorted. 

“Very funny,” Eddie said, with a sigh and a lopsided smile. The overhead branches were starting to sway quite hard. “Do you want to?”

Richie couldn’t think of anything he wanted more. His brain was churning and the daisies were starting to hurt his toes. He thought he might keel over. 

“Alright. I’ll think about it.”

And think about it Richie did. All day long. 

-

They’d said 7pm, which gave him just enough time to daydream and plan and prepare. He skipped first period to sit in the far left cubicle and do just that, scribbling down some things he could say and do on the back of his geometry textbook, in red marker pen. 

Richie told his mom about his plans the moment he reached his front door, that night. Mind speeding about its skull and tongue going even faster. That made Maggie quite happy. In fact, everybody in the Tozier house was happy. Even the plants. 

Fluttering their leaves, stretching their stems, bending their heads as Richie rushed by. All in anticipation for 7 o’clock.


	4. the bluebells in the barrens

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> richie takes eddie to see all his favourite flowers in derry.

Preparation, that night, came in the form of Richie running through his red marker pen plan with the hibiscus next to his bed, touching all the posters and stuffed animals in his room about five times, and fidgeting until his fingers felt numb. Listening to his dad’s scratched-to-shit records, jumping up and down on the sofa, stuffing himself sideways with macaroni cheese. Anything to keep him going. 

By around 6:47, he was absolutely exhausted. 

“Hello Eddie, Eddie spaghetti. Do you like spaghetti?” Richie mumbled, lying upside down on the bed and scrunching up his eyes and nose in concentration. The imaginary heat of Eddie sitting next to him almost made him feel slightly ill. So hot it made the skin behind his ears damp. “Eddie confetti, fish-in-a-netty, own-private-jetty...”

The hibiscus hung its head in shame. 

When 7 o’clock finally bloomed, Richie could barely walk straight. Swaying about the sidewalk like a drunkard, skinny little legs shaking under his weight. He almost would have _liked_ to go toppling over at this point, as gang upon gang of dandelions sprung up through the concrete-cracks and shot him worried looks. So, so much easier than the inevitable shit-show that awaited him. So much easier than Eddie. 

But, sure enough, Richie made it to their meeting point in one piece – an ancient, pink-and-green-crowned oak tree. Crouched at the end of Chapel Street like a shy giant. A very gentle tree, Richie thought. One with big, curly wrinkles and bird nests sat on every branch. One with a lot of soul, old and tender. 

And, most importantly, one with Eddie Kaspbrak leant against it. 

“Daffodil, finally!” he called. “You’re late!”

Richie’s feet came to a halt a good, grassy metre away, white clover rocketing out of the ground. Just as frightened as the rest of him. The tree’s leaves fanned the back of his neck in hello. 

“Only five minutes, spaghetti,” he said, voice bouncing up and down with nerves. “Did you want to - can’t you wait to see me?”

Jesus fucking Christ. 

Eddie pushed himself up off the tree, a little gasp of wind shifting at his t shirt and flashing an inch of soft, freckly tummy. Richie’s mind almost dripped out of its skull. 

“Something like that,” said Eddie, taking a step forward. Stood dangerously close to the trembling white clover ring around Richie’s toes, The slips of hair around his eyes swished from left to right, and the breeze had stained his cheeks cherry. All scruffy.

Angel, angel, angel. 

“Do you have to be back home for dinner, tonight?”

“No,” Richie said quickly, tilting to the left a little bit. “Already had macaroni cheese. Full as can be, Eddie-teddy.”

Eddie nodded, looking Richie up and down. Something like pins and needles tore through his middle. “Alright, good. Well, I wanted you to take me on a tour.”

The words ‘I wanted’ made Richie’s bones feel oddly flimsy, for a moment, as he tried to twist his tongue into forming a reply. Eddie thinking about him was incredible. His own little imaginary pictures and outlines of their evening, all spattered in glitter paint and Eddie-coloured crayons. That tiny scribble of Richie, of the two of them together, that existed in his brain. 

“Tour?” he asked. 

“Tour,” Eddie repeated, a glint in his eyes. “You like flowers, don’t you, Daffodil? I was thinking you could show me all your favourites. Show me the best-est, biggest daffodils in Derry!”

Richie looked away from Eddie’s face and at the boy’s fingers instead, finding a tiny, pale mole on the knuckle of his left thumb. Nice. He knew all the bushes and flowerbeds and trees in Derry better than he knew the English language. He’d only ever shown them to his mom, but she’d found the whole experience thrilling. Maybe Eddie would too. 

“Well, if you’re looking for flowers,” he said, knees twitching slightly. “This part of town is no good at all, Eds. You’ll need to start at the Barrens. Near the stream.”

Eddie let out a tiny, tinkling laugh. As though this were the best news on the planet. “Lead the way, Richie.”

And with an awkward nod (as well as a very happy heart), Richie did just that. For almost two, whole hours. 

-

It had started off a little bit quiet – quiet by Richie’s standards, at least. Walking across the dirt path, humming quietly and shooting each other side-glances. Only really talking about the plants, or how far the walk was. But he got the sense that Eddie didn’t mind. That Eddie maybe just enjoyed being with Richie. 

Wasn’t until they found a certain clearing – wide and shaped like an oval – that their togetherness really sunk in. Richie had been waving his arms about at every angle and talking, talking, talking about how far into the year the buttercups seemed to have survived.

“Buttercup, I like that,” Eddie said lightly. “Funny name. Very you.”

Richie whipped his head around to look at him so fast that, alongside cricking his neck, he’d walked face-first into the biggest, sturdiest branch of a willow tree. The leaves had jumped back in apology, as Richie groaned and nursed his nose, twisting upwards and thus revealing an especially huge carpet of bluebells. 

“Holy shit!” Eddie exclaimed, making Richie flinch ever so slightly. Never heard him curse before. Sort of liked it. “Look at all that blue, Daffodil!”

“Bluebell,” Richie said with a slow nod. “Most common woodland flower, if you’re askin’, spaghetti. They grow in great big carpets. One of my favourites.”

“Oh, your favourite?!” the smaller boy repeated, stepping out and into the clearing. Shifting his feet around, feeling all the petals tickle his shins. Eddie flashed a grin over his shoulder, one so sparkly and rosy and warm that it gave Richie a headache. 

Beautiful. Dear fucking Lord. 

“C’mon,” Eddie said, wading further into the flowers. They vibrated about his legs, quivering in time with Richie’s heartbeat. “S’all tickly! You’ll love it.”

Richie got his feet to move after a good few seconds of gaping in awe, dipping in after him and running his hands over every flower head. Willing them not to rock or shoot up or twist. Begging them to let him do this normally.

He crouched down in the very middle of the carpet, where Eddie was sat cross-legged. Staring up at him with his head cocked to the side and smile reaching his ears. Like a puppy. 

“You like it, Eds?” Richie asked. Eddie nodded earnestly. 

“Real pretty,” he breathed, lying back on his elbows and nuzzling a bluebell. “I can see why you like them so much. Although I think we’ve got different reasons.”

There it was again. The prospect of Eddie, thinking about Richie. Forming words and ideas and pictures and colours around him, like a photo-frame. That tiny, made-up universe. “Why d’you say that, wise man?” 

Eddie raised his eyebrows shrewdly. “I think it’s more than superficial for you, y’know? Flowers...plants...” he trailed off. “They’re like your friends. They have personalities, and you appreciate ‘em. More than just pretty.”

Richie lay back next to him, feeling leaves and petals (and likely bugs too) tap at the frames of his glasses. If only Eddie knew just how very right he was. “Suppose so. They’re good. Easy to talk to...”

Eddie leaned over to look at him, properly now. In his funny, almost analytical little way. He was so near, so real. So pretty. Richie coughed. 

“Am I easy to talk to?” Eddie whispered. 

Oh no.

Richie’s breathing was gaining a tiny wheeze at this point. His eyes jumped from tree to tree, noting every knob and carving and trying to think of something – anything he could reply with. Tongue couldn’t let him down now. 

When he dared look back at Eddie, he felt something erupt low in his stomach. Something like wildflowers, growing all over it. Stretching out of every corner and curl, blooming over every bare patch. Because Eddie was practically glowing. Parting his pink felt-tip lips, fluttering down his eyelids. Looking beautiful as he ever did. 

And leaning in.

Wait - was he leaning in? Sure seemed like he was leaning in. Might have been a trick of the light. A slip on Eddie’s behalf. A nervous habit. Maybe all the sunshine had gone to Richie’s head. Or maybe, just maybe, Eddie Kaspbrak was going to kiss him.

And, laying down in the wiry grass and rinsed in soft, dying bluebell petals, he did just that. Lips butterflying against Richie's, hands curving over his knees. So gentle. So powerful.

Richie Tozier had his very first kiss. And all the while, a single daffodil crept up beneath them. The biggest and the brightest Derry had ever seen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I made a playlist for this fic! a few little songs that I think capture the vibe quite nice.  
> https://open.spotify.com/user/katierosemcg/playlist/2sAqC4jwx9wW3utpFCQABH?si=ocztj5nlQuyCkwL8gL45Qg


	5. the raspberry bush in the woods

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> richie and eddie try to figure out their feelings for each other.

Richie didn’t really think kisses on the lips were made for people like him. 

He’d first seen his mom and dad do it, as a kid. Assumed he was busy with his spaghetti & meatballs and patted their lips together at the dining table. It had made a funny little clapping noise - one that made him jump, and his mother giggle. Very quick, but very tender. Nice. 

Richie thought it might have been the most bizarre thing he’d ever seen.

“A kiss is a loving thing you do, for a person that you like,” his dad had explained, during one of their weekend bike rides. He’d wheel him up and down all the main city roads, and the woods once Richie got the hang of the pedals. Knew none of the other kids would invite him out to play. “It makes ‘em happy, and you, too. Like saying ‘I love you’.”

And when Eddie Kaspbrak had finally given him one, it really did. It made him happy. 

It was a shy kiss. The sort you might have when you’re little, at the end of the field on a dare. Very soft, and over in barely more than a second. A tiny, satiny swipe of the tongue, and a nuzzle of the noses. A butterfly kiss. 

It was still enough. Enough to tell Richie all the things he so badly needed to hear. Enough to shake him awake. Enough to plant the seed of a new, particularly lovely flower. 

He thought he might be falling in love. 

-

“That any good?”

Eddie rested his forehead against Richie’s. They sat in its wake, bluebells falling over their tummies and the moon starting to rise. For once, Richie didn’t need to move. His tongue didn’t either, or his mind. Nothing bulleting about up there. Just Eddie’s fingers, tracing a picture of a cat on his chest. 

Almost had him purring like one. 

“It was...” Richie started, looking up at the moon and feeling a petal cuddle into his ear. Wasn’t very bright yet; looked more like a funny cloud than a planet. He liked that. “It was very nice. Thank you, Spaghetti.”

Eddie shifted his head back, letting Richie see him properly. Lips a little bit swollen, and berry-coloured over the bottom. Eyes half-lidded with something like honey curling around the pupils. Richie didn’t know how he ever got a boy like that to kiss him. 

Angel, angel, angel. 

“Daffodil,” Eddie said seriously. “I like you quite a lot.”

Something low down, around Richie’s hips and the little curve at the end of his spine, fluttered. Soft but strong, like a thick-stemmed sunflower wrapping itself around. He thought his knees might have given out on him, had he been standing. 

“I like you too, Eddie confetti, best-you-ever-metty, dog-as-a-petty. Great – great fun, and-“

Eddie’s hand went stretching out and into a crescent shape around Richie’s cheek. The left hand, with its freckled thumb, and blue-and-green bandaid around the pinky. All its teeny tiny grooves and warm, pink pads. 

“Richie, listen to me. I like you in the special way. The way boys like girls.” 

Richie blinked at him, willing his eyes not to roll shut at the heat of Eddie’s fingers. The grass was bouncing beneath his thighs like a trampoline and five, white daisies crept up with it. The special way. Somebody liked him in the special way. Eddie Kaspbrak liked him in the special way. 

“But I’m not...”

“A girl? I know.” Eddie tightened his grip ever so slightly, careful not to nip at Richie’s skin. He looked solemn, lips pressed tight and cheeks an anxious coral colour. Richie would have quite liked to kiss him again. “I don’t know how to explain it. I’m not sure it’s meant to happen, but it has.” 

“I wasn’t going to say a girl,” Richie said quietly. “It’s okay. I don’t think it has to be like that all the time. My mom told me. I think it’s just whoever you, uh...fancy?” 

“Afraid your mom's the only one who thinks like that, buttercup.” When Richie looked back up at Eddie’s face, there was something ever so slightly sad over it. Winking in the lights of his eyes, or woven into the lines of his face. Loving, but sad. “What were you going to say?” 

Richie tensed. Didn’t know how to reply to that so easily. Not even in his head. Just a lot of whooshing images of himself, up there, without any captions underneath. “I...Not sure. Likely something silly.” 

“Can’t you tell me?” 

His legs were starting to twitch - and so were the bluebells. He sat up, looking away from Eddie and instead at a raspberry bush several metres away. Quite a new plant, Richie would’ve guessed. Wise all the same. It gave him a nod of encouragement. 

“Well, I d’know. I’m just...”

“Richie.”

“I’m just not really very-“

“Richie,” Eddie repeated, firmer this time. Still soft and silvery but strong enough to get Richie’s attention. He’d sat up, too. Sweet, peachy knees touching his chest and eyebrows hanging low. About to say something. 

“Yeah?”

“I think you are beautiful,” he said. 

Silence, for a moment. That just about knocked Richie out of consciousness. 

And for the first time in his life, he half-believed it. If the tiny little shiver of him, that Eddie had drawn in his head, was beautiful, then that was enough. Enough for him to let himself feel it – the roses and orchids and tulips blooming all over him, twisting around every limb. 

That’s what it felt like, to be beautiful. To be loved. 

-

When Richie and Eddie finally finished their wobbly walk back home, and he’d gone staggering in through his front door again, Richie burst into tears. Kicked off his blue-and-yellow sneakers, and started crying and couldn’t stop. His mom’s African violets tore out of their chalky, pink vase. 

Naturally, Maggie had been frightened half to death. Came running out of the living room and had to hold him up so his legs didn’t go folding in. Richie’s face had gone slightly purple, as his mom gripped the side of it and wiped the hair out of his eyes. 

“They’re happy – tears –“ he choked against her hands. “Happy tears - momma!”

She steered him into the bathtub with an apple-scented candle and a decidedly disgusting cup of Rooibos tea before any talking. Richie wasn’t feeling all that well. Once he’d tissue-dried his nose and towel-dried his hair, Maggie sat his head in her lap so she could comb it. Humming a happy forties tune and waiting for him to speak. 

“He kissed me,” Richie told her, scrunching up his eyes at the attention. “Like, properly kissed. Right on the mouth. We were just sittin’ around – went walking through the woods, so I could show him all the flowers and stuff – and a daffodil shot right out of the ground and then we kissed and he said he liked me and –“

“Remember what we said, Richie. Take a breath when you’re speaking,” Maggie cut, using her night-time voice and tickling at his ears. The white roses on her dresser were writhing like very angry snakes. Worried her sick, sometimes. 

Richie did as he was told, breathing through his mouth and fidgeting with the pleats of her skirt. It had little pictures of buttercups, printed in a criss-cross all over it. Lovely. “He said he liked me, and thought I was very nice-looking. It was really fucking cool.”

“I always said you’re nice-looking, sweetheart. You’re just stubborn. Mean to yourself.” He twisted his head in her lap to face her, giving a long, grateful blink. Despite everything, Richie was very lucky to have a mother like her. Wished he knew how to say it, sometimes. 

“But I’m glad Eddie saw it, too. He sounds like a clever boy. Happy for you, Rich.”

And Maggie meant it. Truly. She was happy. 

Happy to see Richie glowing, and twinkling, and thinking lovely thoughts about himself. Happy to see him appreciated by somebody else. Happy to see him happy. 

But in the back of her mind, there was always a little thorn.

Dark and wilted and sharp. Had been growing since the day he was born. Maggie didn’t know if Richie could cope with much more of this - being different from everyone else. It had already cost him so much. Already hurt him so bad. 

She wanted to see Richie happy and loved, with Eddie. She wanted it more than anything. Just hoped the rest of the world would, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry this took so long! think i will be updating this roughly every week from now on. will make a post on my tumblr if it's ever running late. thank you ever so much for all your lovely comments and support!


	6. the bouquet in the courtyard

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> eddie introduces richie to his little gang of 'losers'.

The next morning, at school, Richie felt almost nothing at all like Richie Tozier. 

He thought this might be how it felt to be a new kid, with a too-big backpack and wobbling knees. Hyper-aware of all his movements and the space he took up. Full of new ideas and jokes and favourite subjects, if you’d only ask him – “hi, what’s your name?” 

Eddie Kaspbrak had kissed new life into Richie, it seemed. All light and good feelings and pastel-pink peonies at the bottom of his tummy. He’d rearranged every unlucky star in his universe, and somehow made the longest, loveliest constellation in the Milky Way. 

Today, Richie felt beautiful. 

The purple pansies by the school gates were cart-wheeling when he stood by them to retie his shoelaces. They said congratulations in their tiny nods, and something like a ‘good luck’ too. “Thanks a bunch,” Richie told them, very quietly, before scanning the rest of the schoolyard. All the flowers and trees were watching him, waiting for his next move - waiting to meet Eddie again. 

This proved to need a lot of patience. 

First period was long – much longer than normal. Richie was picked to read again, only this time it was an entire two pages. The bottom ring of leaves on Mr. Collins’ Chinese Evergreen started to wilt, as Richie’s tongue hissed and his eyes glazed over. Couldn’t focus on a single word of it. 

Chemistry brought yet more restlessness. Every non-Eddie-occupied space was starting to gape, and Richie’s knees were shaking with the cold of it. He was sent out of the classroom within fifteen minutes (“would you just sit still?!”) but it didn’t matter so much. Only brought him closer to break-time.

When the bell finally, finally rang, he decided to make a beeline for the bike sheds. He’d seen Eddie there before, with Stanley and Red-Poppy-Beverly, and if it all went horribly wrong, he could pretend to be doing something with his bike. Richie bounced on his feet, shushing the sprigs of grass that shot up with them and waiting. Waiting for that bright, sunny...

“Hiya, Daffodil!”

There he was. Bold as brass and sweet as syrup. 

Richie felt his heart start to pace like a clockwork toy and grinned, careful to keep his teeth tucked in. Eddie was standing about a metre away from him. His blue-grey jeans were rolled up to his shins and a corn-coloured sweatshirt lay over the top. Curvy features whirled into a smile and freckles fattened by sun.

Angel, angel, angel. 

“G’morning, Eddie spaghetti, nail-on-the-heady,” Richie said, trying his best to sound as though every bone in his body wasn’t turning to mush. As though it was every day that he chatted to Eddie Kaspbrak and gave him kisses on the mouth. “How you doin’ today?”

Eddie started to walk, fingers patting about for his pockets. Probably off to the courtyard, or the dining room for a blueberry muffin. 

“I’m pretty good, actually. Got here a little late but the reception was cool, and later I was thinking of going to the...” He paused, tilting his head over his shoulder. “Aren’t you coming, Rich?”

Richie coughed. There they were again – the peonies. 

That light, lovely way Eddie spoke to him hit him harder than any bully ever could, sometimes. Made it seem like asking ‘Rich’ Tozier to come and hang out at break-time was the simplest, most obvious thing in the world. Even from the mouth of an angel.  
“Yeah – yeah, coming, Eds. Carry on.” 

-

If there was anything that Richie understood about other people, it was that, by nature, they were judgemental. Always watching, always analysing, and, in Richie’s case, always steering clear. Probably a survival thing, if you were to get scientific about it – self-preservative, some shit like that. Richie just thought it was cruel. 

When Eddie had finished his chirpy little story about the receptionist misspelling his surname on the late card, and pulled him over to his friends’ dining table, he was ready for it. Almost gritting his teeth, waiting for one of them to come to their conclusion. Waiting for this next door to shut in his face.

It didn't. 

“Some of you already know him, but this is Richie,” said Eddie. His fingertips met Richie’s arm, in a gentle ‘here he is’ and a tug to sit him down. It shook under his touch. “He’s a friend of mine. Figured you’d wanna meet him.”

A hand went flying out in front of Richie’s face, the moment he sat and started fidgeting on the tabletop. One with a big, green cocktail ring and sparkly nail polish on the pinky finger. Red-Poppy-Beverly. “Wise of you, Eddie,” she said, the pink patch on her nose shining bright. “What’s up?”

“Spaceships,” Richie replied. He was practically glowing when a giggle fell through the gaps in her teeth. “I’m alright, uh – stoked to meetcha.” 

Eddie’s other friends were similarly excited by Richie. Apart from Bev, they were all boys. The good kind, he’d come to decide - not the sort that shouted for no reason and spat big, white bubbles on the sidewalk. All giggly and interested, and maybe a little bit shy themselves. Especially “uh – Ben. M’name is Ben.” A sweet-pea flower, Richie would say. 

Bill, an anemone flower, was tall and said words funny, and knew a lot of facts. He touched the table when he spoke, picking every word like you would a daisy for a chain. One that’s clumsy and grey but pretty all the same.

Mike the sunflower sat very close to Stan the orchid, who was looking slightly nauseous for it, and gave Richie lots of warm conversation. Again, very clever. Only in a quieter way. 

A whole bouquet – all of them. The brightest Richie ever saw. 

When break-time drew to a close, and he could finally let his brain sit still, Richie felt a funny sort of loss. Watching Eddie and his friends all wander off to class arm in arm, with slightly droopy eyelids. He didn’t necessarily feel sad – something hopeful there, too. Like a wilted flower, but it was blooming anew. 

The dead petals told him that this is what he’d missed out on, his entire life. Something as teeny tiny as laughter, and chatter, and heat. A face or two next to yours at break-time. The lack of it had left a hole in Richie that he wasn’t sure how to fill. 

The fresh petals, however, tickled him gently on the stomach. They were happy, the bright, blooming part. Told him that this was what he had now. This was the tart, cherry-ish taste of the future. This was company, and being with friends. For the first time in history, Richie had friends. 

-

On the way home from school, he felt it again. That little rush, one that pulled a row of leaves out of the Chapel Street oak tree’s shortest branch. Beverly had wanted to walk a small part of the way with him. She lived in an apartment complex on the next block, said she liked to cross through Richie’s street if she had a lot of time. 

“Y’know, you’ll have to be careful with Eddie,” Bev told him. “Very careful.”

“Course I will,” Richie said, wriggling his fingers in the pockets of his jeans. It was surreal, talking about Eddie like this. With another kid, all breezy and out in the open air. Wasn’t sure if he liked it or not. “He’s very small. I’ll have to hold him so the wind doesn’t cart him off, huh?” 

Beverly giggled at that, like she had earlier, only a little bit dimmer this time. Something serious wrapped around the roots of it. “Nah, I mean it, Richie. He’s...he’s been through a lot.”

He looked at her, front strands of his hair swinging in his face like a frizzy, black pendulum. Bev said it very darkly. Sounded like it had a lot of weight on her tongue. What on earth had she meant by that? 

“He likes you, I know that. But...s’a bit difficult. His mom? God, she’d have a bird if she ever even had an inkling that Eddie had kissed you.”

“How d’you-“

“Eddie told me,” Bev said simply. “In fact, he tells me everything. So don’t try nothing!” She turned around in front of Richie, tucking a twist of curly, orange hair behind her ear and giving him a wink and a wave. All fizzy and bright - full of fire, that Beverly. He liked her very much. 

“This is me, anyways,” said Bev, twisting her head to the left. “See you later, Daffodil boy. Tomorrow, at lunch?”

Richie gave her a left-lipped smile, curling his fingers under his stripy, red sleeves and feeling a rumble in his chest. No sentence had ever made him so happy.

Tomorrow, his head repeated. Gilding every consonant and twisting roses in and out of the ‘o’s. Underlining it in pink, glittery gel pen. 

Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow.

“Yeah,” he said. “See you tomorrow.”


	7. the beech tree in the backyard

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> richie reflects on what eddie really means to him. meanwhile, eddie finds something in his locker.

Richie used to have a lot of medicine, when he was little. 

They were pills – small ones. The colour of tangerines and the taste of sour milk. Always got stuck to the stiff part at the back of his tongue, and made his tummy hurt for the next half an hour. Disgusting. 

Maggie didn’t like it. She’d never really wanted to take him to a doctor. “Just got a big personality,” was the stock slogan, or “he’s creative,” when that one started to wear. The same thing at every parents’ evening, every check-up appointment. Tried to elbow off her own worries, to call them ‘a mother’s nature’ and let them sink. 

They didn’t. 

It wasn’t until he was ten years old that Maggie gave up. On his birthday, when Richie got so incredibly restless and over-excited by the treehouse his dad had built for him that he’d gone flying straight out the front of it. Ate his birthday cake with a chipped front tooth and his arm in a sling, that evening. In the ER. 

That was when their beech tree started rotting. Got a tricky black tumour, just below the branches, that no Garden Tree Handbook ever had the answer to. And that’s when Maggie knew it. Knew she had to be brave, for both Richie and herself; she had to take him to a doctor. 

The answer, apparently, was tiny, orange pills. 

It was around that time, just after his very first prescription, that Richie started lying under his tree. Zigzagging his fingers through the grass, watching the branches twitch. Feeling the earth’s pulse against the small of his back and just thinking. 

Sometimes Maggie sat with him. She’d roll her old jeans up and cross her legs in the dirt like a kid. Finger-combing his growing hair and curling little strands of it around the daisies. Her own genes, those ringlets. 

“I love you, Richie,” she’d say. “No matter what. I always love you, for you.” 

Important to say that a lot, Maggie once heard at a support group. One for parents of kids with behavioural problems - some god-awful community centre deal.

“Nobody else does,” Richie mumbled. 

“What about your dad? He adores you, and grandma does too. We all love you.” 

“They’re family,” He said. “Different sort of love, momma. If they met me on the street, or something, they’d think the same thing as everyone else.”

Maggie held her breath. “And what’s that?” 

He watched the sky as his mother spoke, and the green that bordered it. Quivering in time with all the hums and buzzes of her voice, dipping down to get closer to her. 

“Freak,” Richie said. 

He dug his fingernails into the soil, hard. Felt Maggie’s hands touch each side of his jaw and hook there, holding his head in a heart shape. 

“Now you listen to me, Richie Tozier,” she said quietly. “You aren’t a freak. And if anybody ever calls you that again, you flip ‘em the bird, ‘cause they’re nothing. One day, somebody proper’s going to see you for how you really are. I promise you that.”

“Mom-“

“I promise you, Richie. There’s somebody made for you out there, and they’re going to love you for you, like I do. They’re going to love you so much.”

The daisies stood stock still. Richie would never believe her, not in a million years. But she was right. 

She was really right.

-

The day after walking home with Beverly, Richie thought about his mother’s words. They’d stayed with him, for the next five years, without him really realising. A tiny little rosebud, growing on the underside of his brain and coiling up at the very back. But there, nonetheless. 

He thought Eddie Kaspbrak might be made for him. 

At lunchtime, rather than sitting between him and Anemone-Bill like he might have done before, Eddie sat on the end of Richie’s left knee. Slung his satchel over the patio (with rather a lot of daisies growing through the cracks) and fell right back into him like you would a pink meadow. 

Richie's breath whistled. Thought he might have an aneurysm. 

“Hiya, you lot. Hi Richie.”

He weighed about as much as a cat – a little one with ginger fur and a ruff of it around its neck. Nice and soft and warm, and bouncing gently as he spoke. 

Angel, angel, angel.

“Any of you get that thing in your locker?” Eddie went on, twisting his face around to look at Richie for a split second and giggle. He had a cheese sandwich in his hand and a tiny, pink pimple in the left curl of his nose. So lovely Richie almost felt guilty for looking. 

“Yeah, tacky as all Hell,” said Stan the orchid, who was sitting hip-to-hip with Mike again. Didn’t look very comfy. “Were waiting for one of those to come around again, weren't we?"

Richie leaned into Eddie by half an inch. “What was it, Spaghetti?” 

Eddie's larkspur fingers twirled about his satchel, pushing through highlighter pens and half-empty sanitisers. Took several seconds to seal around the pink piece of paper they’d been looking for and hold it up in the sun for Richie. 

There was a picture of a daffodil printed in all four corners.

“It’s a dance,” Eddie said quietly. “You like those?”

Richie squinted at it, taking in all the pictures and colours before reading the words. Four yellow daffodils, two red geraniums and two long, pink snapdragons across the top and bottom strip. A dance, indeed. Never really been to one of those before.

He looked back up at Eddie. “Uh – don’t know, really.”

"Yeah, me either..."

Red-Poppy-Beverly leaned over the table, sparkly blue fingernails reaching out for Eddie's wrists. She sat with her legs squared, and freckly and wide. The sort of thing his only-existent-at-Christmas uncle would call 'not very ladylike', and that Richie would call quite pretty.

"Hey, I'll be there!" She said lightly. "Figured I'd make my own dress. I could make something for you, too?"

Eddie wrinkled his nose. "I'll think about it, Bev. Rich?" 

Richie was watching the little daisies and dandelions wreathe his shoes. Didn't think a dance would really be so bad - not with Eddie, at least. 

He'd tuck a flower, a tulip maybe, behind his ear and hold his hand on the dance floor, and then a slow song would come on and his face would go a funny blotchy colour. Eddie would giggle and give him a sweet little strawberry kiss in front of everybody. Lovely.

He looked up. "I'll think about it too, Eds. See if I can squeeze it in."

Eddie snickered, decidedly a very pretty noise, and gave him a nod. Richie grinned bright as heaven.

Little did Eddie know, he meant it. He didn't think he'd think about anything else for the next week. Nothing but Eddie's face under pink-and-purple disco lights, and cheap dry ice.

A dance - his first. Nice. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry this sucks!!! have a lot of lovely things planned for the next few chapters


	8. the poppy outside eddie kaspbrak's window

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> richie thinks he might have a best friend.

There were rather a lot of flowers growing outside of Eddie Kaspbrak’s window, by the end of May. 

A thick, pink-and-yellow corsage, snaking around the wooden ledge and shivering against the glass. Too many to count (although he’d tried one Sunday), and enough for his mother to huff herself silly. “They’ll make your nose itch, Eddie,” she said gravely. “Make you sick.” 

“Okay, ma,” came his mousy response. 

Eddie didn’t really believe her. Didn’t see how something so pretty and soft and lovely could do him or his sniffy nose any damage. If anything, they made him smile. When they craned their green necks into his bedroom and gave him funny, petalled grins each morning, Eddie felt happy. 

They reminded him of someone. 

He always got the sense there was some part of Richie Tozier in those flowers, part of his energy. Peppered between the little seeds and pollen grains in the centre, twisting around the wrinkles on the leaves. Just his way of saying ‘hello’ - or more of a ‘thank you’, even. Returning a favour. 

Eddie gave a greeting, and Richie gave three yellow daffodils. Eddie gave a kiss, and Richie gave six pink peonies. Pretty. 

The day he found that tiny, shoddily-made dance invite in his locker, a new flower was starting to form. Another thanks - another thing Eddie had given Richie, or rather led him too, this time. Pale and thin, barely stretched out of its bud. But there nonetheless.

And there in the form of a single, red, poppy. 

-

It was when Bev had offered to help Richie with this particularly tacky dance, that its strawberry petals started rolling free. 

“S’all about flowers and springtime,” she said on the way home, invite creased under her painted thumbs. “Gonna put pink-and-yellow bunting round the gym.” 

Them walking together was blooming into a sweet, sunny little habit. With Richie wheeling his bike very slowly, and Bev skipping alongside him. She’d tuck a pink-stained cigarette between her teeth and tickle all the gardenia bushes, and Richie would keep them nice and still for her. A team. He liked that. 

“I mean, it’s like it was made for you and Eddie, isn’t it?!” Bev said, exhaling a tuft of cigarette smoke. 

“D’know…” he replied. It still felt funny talking about Eddie so openly - too real. More than that tiny, secret daffodil, glowing and winking at the back of his brain. Almost more than he could really cope with. “Just hope he’s not expectin’ too much.”

“Why, though?” She said. “You got this, Richie. You’re doing good so far. Reckon you could blink at him, or just stand with him all night, and he’d be rushing off to buy a wedding ring.” 

Jesus Christ. 

Richie snickered, but her words made him feel very heavy. Couldn’t ever imagine anybody feeling like that about him. 

“Just mean dance-wise,” he said. “Don’t really know what to expect. Never went to those Christmas discos, any of that shit.” 

It was now that he realised Bev was leaning into him a little bit. Just by the teeniest quirk of her middle, or the tiniest slope of her shoulder. Curling against him like a Virginia creeper vine on a red brick wall. The gardenia bushes shook. 

“Then we’ll go to my place, now,” she said with a shrug. Richie half-choked. “I’ll fix you up, flower boy.” 

“What?”

She giggled and led him off down a little alleyway - the opposite direction to his house. Richie’s hole-speckled sneakers came to a halt. “C’mon, Rich!” she said, with a twirl that fanned her skirt wide. The birch branches overhead were quivering. 

“Gonna teach you how to throw shapes!”

-

Bev’s apartment was small and smokey. All dirty, peeling wallpaper and half-broken lamps. A little box-shaped television, and a green sofa she dumped her bookbag on. Richie got the sense she didn’t think much of it. 

“My dad’s not a dentist, you see,” she said, scratching the back of her neck. There was something slightly apologetic, growing just under her words. As though she’d done something naughty. “But I’m getting a job when I turn sixteen. The Aladdin, I think. Spruce this place right up!” 

Richie grinned at her. “Nah, I like it. S’pretty.” 

She made quick work of putting a record on. Richie had never heard it before - Fleetwood Mac, he thought. Something that wasn’t really right for their dancing but sounded quite nice all the same.

_I took my love, I took it down..._

Beverly’s fingers found Richie’s shoulders. He liked how they hooked there - soft, round and pink-painted over bony and tense. Like a pretty little bridge with flowers round the railings, arching over a particularly choppy river. “Loosen up, Daffy,” she said gently. “It’s only me.” 

Richie shook himself and looked at Bev’s face to try and believe it. Eggshell eyelids fluttering down around their feet - could almost see the steps and spins and twirls she was planning, right through her forehead. “Daffy? Like the duck?” 

“No, dipshit. Short for daffodil, I’m just keepin’ you on your toes.” Bev’s eyes sailed up to his face in a smile. The ivy fluttering at her open window shivered. “Alright, put your hands on my waist.” 

Richie (more or less) did as she said, feeling a bit silly. Been a while since anybody so openly asked him to touch them like that - not since 5th grade, when Greta Bowie told all her girl-friends that you’d get a nasty red-and-purple rash all over your body if Richie Tozier touched you. By the end of the semester, he almost half-believed it. “Like that?” He asked. 

She took one hand away from the shoulder to curve it over his left one, and give it a little tug down to where her waist actually was. “More like that kind of area. You feel the bumps?” Bev stretched to circle the small hump of his own hip. Gave him a funny urge to jerk it away. Richie nodded. 

“You got it, Rich!” She exclaimed, as he clumsily corrected himself. The ivy leaves were swollen and stretched with pride. “Alright, now follow my feet. Real shuffle-y, simple.” 

Bev started shifting her weight from foot to foot. Each little exchange with a twirl or a sparkle or a sway. “Dancing queen,” he said quietly, giving her a grin and stumbling over every polka dot of the bedroom rug. 

“Thanks a bunch,” she giggled. “Just copy. Doubt Eddie will be all that practiced, either. Maybe I’ll give you both a lesson.” 

That made Richie smile, as Bev often did. Gave her waist a warm little squeeze. Most boys would be very jealous of him right now, he thought, but Richie just didn’t see her like that. More like a newborn poppy than a dark, red rose. “Does Eddie ever, uh...ever say why he’s, like, into me?” he said quietly. 

Bev twitched her lips left and right as she thought about it, still focussed on their feet. She gave him a small nudge as to ask him for a twirl. “He thinks you’re very different,” she replied, spinning in his hand and watching her dress spiral. “Different to other boys. Says he can feel your soul, sometimes.” 

Richie wondered what that felt like. Just couldn’t see it - not Eddie. Eddie, all pretty and bright. Getting little pink-and-green fireworks in his tummy over Richie’s wobbly voice. Drawing sparkly outlines over the crooked curve of Richie’s nose under his eyelids. 

Too lovely for him to comprehend. 

They played the song about four times for Richie to properly get the hang of it. By the fifth, he wasn’t doing so bad. Putting his too-big feet in all the right places and not gripping onto Bev too tight. He was grateful for her patience, and for her in general. Reminded him of his mom, sometimes. 

When he’d cycled home to his actual mother, and told her that he’d spent the night at his friend’s place with the widest grin he’d ever worn, Richie felt over the moon. A whole meadow's worth of bright feelings. Went off to his bedroom to practice some more steps on the quiet, and water his hibiscus. Just letting it all sit on his brain. 

It was another change. Another lucky star. For that was the first time, ever, that somebody had invited Richie Tozier round.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> dedicating this chapter to my best friend jay (odetodun on here). we wrote a little thingy about bev teaching richie to dance amongst countless other things about their friendship, and she means to me what bev means to richie here. song they're dancing to is landslide by fleetwood mac. thank you all for being patient and so so lovely as always! reading your comments about 100 times got me through this last week


	9. the daffodil in richie tozier's hand

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> richie gets ready to go to the dance.

Saturday night came rolling out of the dirt faster than Richie could get his head around. 

He’d been counting the days very carefully - Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday - until he missed one and his head went fuzzy. And then all of a sudden it was 5 o’clock, with Richie sat knotting his too-tight dress shoes (“tie the bunny ears together…”) and waiting for Eddie’s knock at the door. 

“How’s it going, Spaghetti?” he said to his mother’s green rug. “You're looking...maybe we should...yeah.” 

The African violets slumped in their pot. 

“I don’t know how we’ll do it,” came Eddie’s satiny voice down the phone, the night before. He’d written the number for his landline on the back of a little pink napkin that day, and pressed it into Richie’s hand when the lunch bell rang. Richie had to go and sit in the toilets for half an hour afterwards to calm himself down. 

“If my mom knows we’re going together I’ll never be allowed.” 

Richie lay upside down on his bed as they talked. Tapping his feet against the wall - thud, thud, thud - and trying to touch the Solar System poster pinned to it with his toes. It was funny, feeling Eddie's voice tickle the curl of his ear like that. Sprawled out in his bedroom with his hair stuck to his cheeks and a little box of Eddie in his hands. Richie almost thought bright yellow flowers would come bursting out of the speaker. 

“Figured you’d take more of a looker, huh?”

“Oh, cram it!” Came Eddie’s voice, crackling within its tiny phone-line envelope. Richie was hypersensitive to things like that - first noted when his dad took him to the local baseball game and the audience got so loud he’d half passed out in his seat - but he didn’t flinch. Even when Eddie was noisy, each word of it was a bright, orange daisy.

“If you were a girl I think she’d be over the moon,” he said dreamily. “Green eyes, and curly hair...she likes curly hair.”

Richie’s nose glowed pink. “Then tell her you’ve got a girl,” he said, as though he’d thought this through. “Say it’s Bev or somethin’, then just come to mine. Boys are meant to pick up girls, I think. Traditionally.”

He hoped that was right; never actually been to a dance in his life. He had been desperate to go to his 7th grade Christmas-time disco, but Henry Bowers told him that if he did he’d give him an Indian burn behind the DJ platform, and then proceeded to give him one on the playground when Richie said he didn’t know what that was. 

“Won’t your parents care?” Eddie said, voice a little small. 

Richie paused, the faces of his parents peeking through the orange daisies about his head. He could hear them banging about in the kitchen below him. Mom cooking Mexican fajitas with that cheap salsa dip on the chicken that Richie liked, and Dad laying the table all wrong. His tummy grew warm. 

“No,” Richie said softly. “My parents won’t care at all.”

Maggie, of course, did care - so much it made her heart shiver. Only in the completely opposite sense. If Mrs. Kaspbrak was a thorn, then she was a curly red rose. 

Richie called his mother up to his room the moment Eddie’s voice dwindled out of the phone, and she’d stayed there ‘til past midnight. Humming old rock 'n' roll tunes and rubbing soft little circles between his shoulder-blades, like she did when he was tiny. 

“Proud of you, Richie,” she said gently against his shoulder. It was about one in the morning, when Richie’s legs finally started laying still. He twisted his head to look at her. 

“Proud? Why?” 

She shrugged, pushing a little chaplet of curls back off his forehead. They'd gone all bushy and big with nerves - “beautiful,” she’d tell him in the morning, as he'd try and yank his comb through them for the hundredth time. 

“Don’t think you could’ve done it about a year ago - a dance,” Maggie whispered. “Hell, maybe a few months ago. And they haven't gotten any less scary. Which means you're tough as nails.” 

That made Richie grin. Teeth poking out like baby's breath petals and flashing in all their chipped and wonky glory. He only smiled like that when feeling very comfortable, and secure. Safe. Richie felt safe an awful lot these days. 

His mother was right. Things were very different a few months ago. With skin strong as eggshells and knees like strawberry jelly, Richie was vulnerable. The feeling that clung around his hips since the day he was born, and the feeling he hated more than any other. Vulnerable.

Only needed a strong pair of hands to prise it off. That's what he always thought. 

But Eddie's hands didn't. Didn't take any of the bruises away - holy hell, there were so many - and didn't pick off any thorns. They just held Richie's. Gave his fingers little squeezes when he was feeling frightened, and said 'that's alright' through the dark pink grooves of his skin. Derry never saw so many daffodils, as it did that summer.

"Thanks mom," Richie said. He meant it too. He was grateful for her.

-

It wasn’t until 5:07pm, that those three, soft little knocks came at his door. 

Maggie had to take the African Violets out of the room before a second pot got shattered, and also herself as not to intimidate Eddie. Felt funny, the two of them coming to know each other. Two different planets, one red and one yellow, on either side of the universe, finally curling into one another in an orbit. Quite nice, Richie thought, but scary. So fucking scary.

He thought his fingers might have gone slightly numb, as he half-strangled himself with his dad’s tie and hovered about in the hallway. Wasn’t nearly as important as he was building it up in his head to be - Eddie’s other friends didn’t seem to think much of the dance at all. But they’d had a lifetime of this sort of thing. Richie once heard that when in a drought, even a curly green weed is a whole meadow’s worth to its farmer. 

And sure enough, his own little meadow was growing fast and tall and bright that evening. For Eddie Kaspbrak was standing on his doorstep, and grinning at him like a Cheshire cat.

“Evening, Daffodil!” He said brightly. There was a tiny, pink-white daisy tucked behind his left ear. 

Richie didn’t know where to look. There was just so much of him - acres and acres of things to zone in on and draw tiny, glowing shapes around. Like the clean white shirt sealed up around his collar, and the slightly glittery stuff around his eyes and nose - courtesy of Bev, no doubt - and those lovely, freckly hands held out for Richie’s. 

“Oh - hi,” Richie said, pins and needles jetting through his tongue. Eddie giggled and moved a hand forward, curving over his right one, while the other reached into the little crochet bag over his shoulder. 

“You ready to go, love?” 

When Richie finally managed to look away from Eddie’s hand, eyes all blurry and almost even slightly teary, the other one had re-emerged. Mike Hanlon, sloped on the curb in his beat up ford, hit down on his horn, and Bev leaned a pink-lipsticked face out of the window to call “hurry up!”, but Eddie still took it nice and slow. 

He’d pulled out a daffodil. Pressed it into Richie’s hand, and gave him a small, but very powerful, smile. ‘For you’ it said. ‘All for you.’

Richie cleared his throat, and felt his own grin form. Like a sunflower winding out of the earth, and tickling him on the knees. 

“Yeah,” he said. “Ready, Eddie.”


	10. the thorns in the boys' bathroom

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> eddie wants to dance with richie. richie's got a problem.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> teeny tiny warning for a threat of violence/bullying in this one! and an extra long chapter cuz i've been doing you lovely lot dirty with all these delays.

Bev had been right, Richie thought, about the gym being all prettied up. 

By the time the seven of them came rolling in, it was really starting to bloom properly. All papery bunting and see-through silver drapes - courtesy of Greta Bowie’s overworked school dance committee. Pink, flowery posters on all four walls (roses, begonias, daisies, tulips) and disco lights underneath. Somebody even twisted all the tabletop napkins into tiny, sweet little animals. 

Richie's grandma had taught him to do that, once. At her birthday party. Had him make a curvy pink cat and then gave him the biggest slice of sponge cake he'd ever seen in reward. Richie decided he didn't mind parties so much after this - even thought school dances might be the same.

They weren't.

Bev leaned to pick a napkin up with her sparkly, bangle-ringed hand. Held it under Richie’s nose to make him giggle - “tragic, huh?!” He snorted, tapping its paper beak with his pinky and giving her a nod of ‘totally’. To himself, he would’ve called it very pretty. She gave him a knowing grin.

Had thought he might get a bit overwhelmed with something like a dance. Bev told him beforehand they could get out if it happened - she'd lie down with him on the football field and let him smoke her funny cigarettes. But Richie was happy tonight. Oozed out of him like goldy-bronze honey and left everyone around him's hands sticky with it. Especially Eddie's - they hadn't let go of Richie's so far. And for that, Bev gave her grin. Bright and sunny as a bumblebee. 

The group of them had taken a table right near the back, Stan and Mike doing their usual overlap of the thighs and looking very shifty about it. Bev was letting everybody marvel at the red, satiny dress she'd made for herself. Broad and freckled white shoulders peeking above the top, and pink knees curving out of the bottom. Richie thought she looked beautiful.

“We’re a bit late,” Stanley said in a strained voice, once he'd finished running his thumb over the skirt of it. “They’ll start putting the slow songs on, soon…Are we getting up for the slow songs?"

Bev stretched over the tablecloth to give his hand a squeeze. "I'll dance with you, Stanny!" She said cheerily. Gave Mike a look that Richie couldn't quite describe - blue around her eyes shining silver for a second. "Make sure you're not on your own." 

Eddie stayed very close to Richie, as they let the party whirl around them for a little while and Bev continued to reassure Stan. Almost like a proper boyfriend might do, to his boyfriend. Running three fingers gently up and down Richie’s thigh, leaning his head against Richie’s shoulder and letting his cheek bunch up there. Teeny tiny fingertip kisses. He felt something like sunshine hug the back of his neck.

“Are you happy, Richie?” Eddie asked him quietly at one point. He’d curled a small, pink hand around Richie’s forearm and was tickling at it very gently. Lights gone a darkish blue colour and the gifted daffodil, now tucked into Richie's belt loops, swayed like a sleeping baby. “Happy as Larry,” came his matter-of-fact response. “Music’s not bad, is it?”

"If you’re into that sort of thing," Eddie said with a wink. (The music was abysmal.) "Might be nice to, uh, dance to it? Later, I mean.”

Jesus fucking Christ. 

Richie nodded out of instinct, not registering what Eddie was asking for half a second. Felt the peonies and posies crawling up around his ribcage before he even knew what they were. Eddie wanted to dance with him - like Bev said he would. In public. Together. 

“Yeah, alright,” he said. Petals tickled the back of his tongue. He had to think about this some more; to plan and rehearse it and curl roses around every dance step. Felt important enough for that. “Say, I’ll go take a piss, and then I’ll meet you out here by the platform in five minutes. Lemon squeezey?” 

Eddie snickered. Scratched just below his nose with the curvy nail of his thumb and raised up his eyebrows, like a little fox or a deer. Something wide-eyed you’d find in the heart of a forest. 

“Deal," he said softly. Richie's heart sped up. "Lemon squeezey.” 

-

Richie had a favourite stall, in the ground floor boys’ bathroom. His mom always said that they were handy little cubby holes for ‘people like him’ - nice and quiet, always private. Just a nook to catch your breath in. Even a seat for Richie to bounce on, while he drew penises over all his gym exercise diagrams and hummed the tunes off his dad’s records ‘til he was calm. That’s what this particular, phone-number-plastered stall meant to Richie.

Calm. 

Tonight, he was aching for it. Ready to sit and kick his feet against the door, and wrap Eddie’s daffodil around his fingers a few hundred more times. Ready to build his velvety little moment up just that teeny, tiny bit higher.

What he wasn’t ready for, however, was two rough hands to grab him by the jaw the moment he entered the bathroom.

Richie’s neck jerked up at a funny angle with the hands’ grip, feet tapping on the tiles and arms out in front of him like a zombie as he tried to stay upright. Stranger, stranger, stranger. Only when he saw those nasty, scabby legs swinging over the mouth of a sink, smelt something ripe and smoky, did Richie understand completely.

Henry Bowers. As rotten- and angry-looking as he ever was.

“Evening, Beaver,” he said, with a bite in his voice. It was one of his cronies that lunged for Richie, now passing him by the face into Henry’s grey and calloused hands. “Long time no see!” The daffodil he’d twisted through his belt loops hit the floor. 

Richie felt like he might be sick - could almost see it clotting round his shoes. Oh no. Please not now. Had to get back to Eddie. He made to open his mouth and protest but all of a sudden Henry’s fingers were hooked inside of it, and all that came out was a bitter, angry slurry against them. “Sh, sh, sh,” Henry crooned, reminding Richie eerily of his mother for a moment. “Just being friendly. You’ve grown since I last saw ya.”

The two other boys in the room - Richie was too disorientated to identify them - bent in close to get a good look at him. Henry was forcing his lips back hard, and exposing a wonky set of slightly yellow teeth. Anxious ulcer on his bottom gum and cucumber skin wedged behind a molar. “I think _they_ grew too, Henry,” said the boy on the left. 

The daffodil turned black at his feet.

“Yeah, what’s up with those, Tozier?” Henry asked, stretching back his dirty thumbs to prod around his mouth. "Holy shit - they’re even starting to rot!”

The dying daffodil twitched fast, getting faster as the others gasped. Ogling Richie's mouth like some morbid art exhibition. "Gnarly..." One of them said, rapping his knuckle against a tooth. Richie knew he wouldn't be leaving unharmed. 

Would Eddie think he ditched him? A beat like a funeral drum throbbed beneath his shoes.

“That’s right, that’s right...Bucky Beaver can’t keep his hands off the candy jar,” Henry growled on. The sound of his voice had started to loop-the-loop as Richie lost his grip on the situation. “Think I can help you out with that.”

Looking back, he thinks now was the moment when his brain really started to give up on him. It'd been doing that since he was little - like in sixth grade, when Bowers and his buddies tried to flush his gym shoes down the toilet, and Richie had been so phased by the whole thing that he'd had to take a nap in the nurse's office. For it was now that, with a snap, Henry popped out his shiny, trusty, switchblade. And it was now that the thudding beneath his feet had begun to shake the tiles.

Oh, fuck.

“Your old man must have told you ‘bout this one,” Henry said, smiling harshly. Richie let his head tilt limp in its grip. “Need to cut it out.”

One of the boys let out an excited howl at the prospect but his counterpart wasn’t paying attention. He was staring at something else. On the floor, just by their feet - the daffodil. Eyes wide and white as its shaky little fit intensified, and the blue tile beneath it started to come loose.

“I’ll fix you right up,” Henry sneered under his breath, carding his fingers through Richie’s hair to steady him. Maggie had spent the entire day trying to get it all fluffy and lovely and nice. Ruined now. “I’ll sort you out for good, Trashmouth…”

Henry drew back his knife, settling on an angle and swinging up his elbow like a madman. The pulse below their feet got louder - boom, boom, boom - and Richie's panic reached its fissure point. Too much. Going to meltdown. Just about to cry out, and scream, and struggle, when -

CRACK!

Something hard hit him on the side of the cheek. 

Sharp. Right against the bone. Snapped Richie, and all the other boys, apparently, out of that funny trance. Even Henry lowered his knife, fingers threaded loose in Richie's curls. “What the…?”

CRACK! CRACK! CRACK!

More pellets came their way. They were large, and cornflower-blue. Dancing like popcorn seeds over a fire by now and flinging themselves at all four boys. Porcelain, Richie managed to note through shielded eyes, as they clipped him over the head. They were porcelain. Bathroom tiles.

The floor, naturally, was ripping itself up. Coming loose and revolting against all the agony vibrating on top of it. Or rather, being forced to. For something bigger - that deep, rumbling metronome Richie had felt - was growing up beneath it. And it was thorny, and grassy, and green. Earth.

Richie’s heart was forcing up the earth.

A new tree, gnarled and black, was rising through the flooring. Hearty and fierce. Thorns whipping up around its trunk like a tutu skirt and snake-hissing at all but Richie. It was hurt. It was frightened. It was angry. 

Henry and his friends got themselves into gears. He peeled himself out of his seat in the sink and started skidding out, barely dodging the dark green barb swiping for his ear. “Go, go, go - earthquake!” He roared, not checking to see if his friends had followed. A branch belted against his knees. “It’s a fucking earthquake!”

Richie stayed stood very still. Let all the forest green around him whip and curl there like a peacock against its feathers. It and him felt just the same, and the growth seemed to know it; springing up lilies in a ring around the tree, as Bowers and his friends were well and truly gone. Richie closed his eyes against them, and burst into tears.

Rotten. He really did feel rotten.

When he opened his eyes, he’d find more white than green. Safe now; the earth around him was starting to catch on. Felt the presence of something warm and good. Something a bit celestial.

For, in all his pretty and poorly-timed glory, Eddie Kaspbrak was now standing in the doorway. Staring at Richie in the middle of the leafy mess that was now the boys’ bathroom, with something a bit like terror and a little bit like awe in his face. Panic. But love, too. Always love.

Angel, angel, angel.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ive been revising and redrafting this since thursday and drove myself a bit crazy so im sorry if this sucks.


	11. the orchids next to the sink

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> eddie's determined to look after richie.

Richie had his first real meltdown when he was twelve. 

Of course, he’d had countless little tantrums and hissy fits when he was very small. Always crying, always kicking, always trying to run to the quiet. His mom had to give him special, milky white pills to let him sleep and stop him doing it all through the night. Only when the doctor got his hands on him did she understand why.

Richie was not so much an aggressive child and more of a sensitive one. Sounds and colours and smells could cut through his thin, freckly skin like tiny little knives - and the pain of it was pushing him over the edge. That was why he’d kick and panic when his mom tried to wash his hair in the bath. That was why he’d try and wriggle out of his booster seat on the way to school every morning. He was hurting. All of his senses were really, really hurting. 

And it was hard, as it was always going to be, to tell this to his increasingly impatient teachers. Too keen to peg him down as ‘naughty’, or perhaps ‘a troublemaker’ if somebody else got hurt. Even when he was twelve. 

Picture day. That’s when it happened; Richie had never been so stressed in his life. His mom had put something thick and sticky in his hair to make it lay more flat that he didn’t like at all, and she’d sent him to school in a shirt that didn’t fit him anymore. White socks pulled halfway up his shins and new glasses big and bulky as ever. All the other kids in his class had laughed themselves hoarse. 

“Can’t polish a turd,” Henry Bowers told him matter-of-factly, as he pulled on Richie’s ear with grubby fingers and queued behind him for his picture. Surprisingly clever with his words, as a kid, but only when used to hurt someone. “Can you, Bucky? No matter what you do, you’ll always be the same, big ugly beaver to me!”

That was almost enough. Pushed Richie well on his way. The icing on the cake was the cameraman touching his knees to try and position them a bit more neatly on the stool, and tapping his lips with a sickly “smile!” It was hot out, even hotter with all these teachers fussing over him. And when the flash of the camera went off, Richie just couldn’t take it anymore. Nor could the playground willow tree. 

It had gone haywire. Cracked the concrete and blackened the soil. That was the first time Richie lost control.

Now, here was the second. On the night of his very first school dance; the night that had his heart butterflying in his ribs for the last week. Three years later and still nothing had changed - really was the same, big ugly beaver. All drawn to a halt with him crying his eyes out in front of Eddie Kaspbrak in a bathroom, and falling to his bruised, skinny little knees.

Rotten, rotten, rotten. 

-

“Richie, Richie, we gotta go!”

Richie couldn’t hear much of anything. Only a dull roar curling around his ears; the sort of noise you might hear very deep down in the ocean. Not with pretty blue-and-yellow fish, or the deep red curve of a boat floating by on top, but the very pit of it. With a half-broken oxygen tank, and a hungry shark on your heels - that’s where Richie was. Sinking. Scared.

“There’s been an earthquake, or an explosion, or... fuck, I don’t know.”

Eddie’s little hands curved either side of his jaw. Thumbs linked in a shadow-puppet dovetail and forefingers rubbing spiral shapes into each cheek. He was trying to get through to him, making all the lilies shake. And it was almost half-working.

“I know you’re frightened but it’s over. It’s all over,” he said carefully. His tone was awash with honey and sweet tea and all things gentle - very clever, that Eddie. Like chit-chat with a butterfly on the end of your finger, always keeping it from flying away. “I gotcha,” he whispered. “I’m here.”

Richie started to stir. Bowers was long gone and his nose was bleeding a little bit. He noted the damp of the soil over his hands, the white of Eddie’s saucer eyes in front of him. Looked positively horrified at the drippy, dirty floor beneath their thighs but a pretty light shone through his tension - a light just for Richie. Love, he’d someday learn. Nothing more than love. 

“We need to get you home, bubba,” Eddie said seriously.

Richie made his first noise. Quiet but sure of itself. “No,” it said, in all its slurred and strangled glory. Eddie raised his eyebrows and sped up his little face-strokes to calm him down, to help him think more clearly, but it came again. It was crisper this time. “No,” Richie repeated. “Slow song. I learnt it - can’t ruin it - we’ve still got to do the slow song.” 

Eddie’s face dropped. In a soft way, rather than a sad one. Anxious gleam in his eyes glowing all dim and lips twitched into a lazy smile. Cute.

“Don’t you worry about that. We can dance to one of your records at home. But for now, you can’t be at school, Richie. I think you’re having a meltdown. You need rest.” 

“But Bev - Stanley -”

“Are both having the loveliest night of their lives!” Eddie chimed in, shushing between every few words. 

“Mike got his shit together and now him and Stanny are twirling the house down to Mazzy Star. And some chick asked Bev to dance for a bit, then all of a sudden they’re smoking in the courtyard and putting kisses on each other’s noses.” He giggled and gave Richie’s cheeks a little squeeze. Ruching them up either side of his long, hooked nose and tickling them there. Almost enough to have them both laughing. 

“It’s all worked out okay. You haven’t ruined anything. But please, please, please, Rich. Let me take you home?”

Richie swallowed hard and leaned into Eddie’s clean hands. They smelt like pink shrimp candies in a pick ‘n’ mix bag. Nice. Could dance later, he was right about that. Sometimes he forgot that they had forever if they wanted it. That Eddie wasn’t going to leave him any minute. 

“Okay,” Richie croaked. “Lets go home.” 

\- 

Maggie Tozier had broken a promise to herself; the one where she swore not to watch the clock. Not to drag her green, paisley armchair right up to the living room door, and count down every second that passed until nine o’clock. Not to worry herself sick.

Needless to say that when the front door swung open at seven thirty, and in staggered Richie with blood dried over his lips, she almost had a heart attack. 

“Richie? Rich? Have you been sick? Can you hear me? Richie?!” 

The African violets stooped low behind Eddie Kaspbrak’s back. He took one hand away from where it clasped Richie’s waist and put it on Maggie’s instead. Looked a lot like her son, he marvelled momentarily. Same wonky nose, and each eye shaped different to the other. Pretty. 

“Don’t worry, Mrs. Tozier,” he said gently. Eddie was always good with grownups - something his mother had forced into him with strong hands. “He’s just had a bit of a panic. I’m now going to get him to sit down upstairs and then I’ll tell ya all about it.”

Maggie folded her arms together, shaky fingers stained with tomato sauce, and tried to calm herself down. Had made Richie and Eddie a pizza - although he won’t eat while he’s like this, she mused darkly. She pressed a hand against the small of Eddie’s back and let Richie shuffle upstairs ahead of them. 

“Firm but gentle,” Maggie instructed him urgently. “If you’re too passive he won’t listen and will go completely into himself, but if you’re too firm you’ll frighten him. He’s sensitive to everything when he gets like that. Need a good balance, okay, sweets?”

Eddie gave her a nod, and a little smile - one that said ‘I know it, but thank you’ - before skidding up after Richie. He steered them both into the bathroom and perched the taller boy on his toilet seat. Touch positively aching with warmth. With love, and something a bit like hope too. The orchids by the sink swirled.

“I’m gonna run you a bath,” he said. “Getcha nice ‘n’ clean. I’ll go downstairs while you take your clothes off, ‘kay?”

Richie blinked. Pulling himself out of that funny stupor he’d let himself dip back under, and squinting up at Eddie's serious eyes. They looked like marigold petals. “Be gross if I’m naked,” he slurred. 

Eddie shushed him, untying his too-tightly-knotted shoelaces for him and letting out a loving little snicker. “Not gross at all, Daffodil. It’s only a body. And I’ll put in loads of bubbles and shit, so I won’t see a thing. Be like you’re chillin’ under a blanket. I’ll even wait outside if you want me to?”

“Nuh uh - stay,” Richie said clearly. That tore him right out of his drowsiness - with a thorn in its strike. Couldn’t be alone. “Really wanna be with you.” 

And that made Eddie grin, the widest he had all night. 

When he left Richie to sort himself out (after listening at the door, in case of any thuds or crashes, for about forty five seconds) and headed back downstairs, Maggie was still stood in the same place. Skinny shoulders all rigid and face white as milk. 

This was straight out of a mother’s little nightmare-daydream - especially for her. But Maggie listened to Eddie tell the story with a straight face, sitting on the bottom step with him whilst he rubbed her back. Stayed nice and strong like she always had. And that’s what she thought of Richie by the end of it. Strong. 

“Thank you Eddie, for treating Richie like you do,” Maggie said quietly. Her voice sounded like it might after shouting for a long time, although Eddie got the sense that wasn't in her nature. “He’s fragile...he’s really fragile. Nobody ever got that, you know?”

“Yeah...I do know. It’s harder than you’d think not to hurt someone, sometimes.” He moved to hold her hand and squeeze it against their wobbly knees. 

“He’s got all these…these soft edges. And whenever anybody looks at them, they always want to try and make them hard. Like it’s something you’ve got to fix. But it doesn’t even do that, when they're tough with him…” Maggie’s nose started glowing pink; she was going to cry. “Doesn't fix anything. It just hurts him. Just makes him hate his edges. He hates all of it! But you don’t...and then when you don’t, he starts agreeing, and…” 

Eddie hummed softly and let her cry. Only a few, briny little tears. A gasp or two. And they were happy as much as they were sad. 

“It's hard to trust anybody with him, now, so...thank you, for keeping Richie soft,” Maggie whispered. “Thank you for seeing the good in that. Seeing the good in him.”

He simply smiled, and raised an eyebrow. So much knowing, and magic, and pure, good nature, in that little quirk. So much Eddie. 

"Ah," he said. "I never saw anything but, Mrs. Tozier.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> only two more chapters left! im getting increasingly emotional writing these cuz it all means so much to me but just another little thank you for the fierce support and love ive received! I never thought this fic would bring so many people joy!!


	12. the camellia flowers in the bathtub

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> eddie learns to rebel. richie learns to feel safe.

Eddie’s momma always told him that cleanliness was very important.

First came about when he was six years old - the kind of age where a little boy gets very interested in dirt. In knee-high grass, and different breeds of butterfly, and how daisy petals sometimes tint pink at the tips. Eddie, with his small and sprightly legs and his freckly, sun-proof skin, would have happily spent the day immersing himself in these things. Just like any other kid.

And when his grandad turned up one weekend with a rucksack full of geranium seeds and his special gardening gloves, Eddie was just on the cusp of falling head over heels in love with it. With the earth, and all its flowers. He’d been so excited to show his momma their work in the garden - how neatly he’d sealed up the soil, and the little discs of it caked against his knees - so excited to hear her praise. A pat on the head, a ‘well done sweetie-pie!’ and some extra potatoes with his dinner. 

Needless to say, her reaction was nothing of the sort. 

“You have to stay away from these things, Eddie!” His mother groaned, holding his wrist above him in a vice grip. She had him right where she wanted him; in the bathtub, under the scratch of her bubbly pink loofah and the calluses on her hands. Scrubbing all that nasty junk off him. “The outdoors is very dangerous for special children, like you, makes you unclean. A clean boy is a happy boy, got it?”

Eddie scowled at his feet, watching the faucet dribble idly between them. He wanted to tell her that she was wrong. That he’d been far happier in the mud with his grandad than he ever had perched on her knee, in front of the television set. That he thought his geraniums would look very pretty someday soon. 

But the little voice in six-year-old Eddie Kaspbrak’s head had its way, like it always did. Its mantra was the loudest thought of all: momma knows best. 

And so he said, “got it, ma,” and took her advice. 

Nine years later, the reek of his mother’s mint-and-rosemary soap still lingered bitter under his nose. Still made his eyes water in the corners. Eddie felt it when he hobbled home from the dance with his arms around Richie Tozier’s waist, felt his head reel with the stench. 

His first thought, of course, had been just how frightened Richie looked. How upset. But his second was how dirty. And his third was which scent of soap he was going to scrub against his arms in the tub. That’s what he always did, what he was always told to do, when he was sad: took a nice, long bath.

Got clean. ‘Cause clean boys are the happiest boys, that’s what momma said. And still, if he was truly honest with himself, the only time Eddie really felt like a happy boy was when he was with Richie. When he let him curve his soil-coated fingernails against his knuckles, and knelt down in the long grass with him. 

When he was that teeny, tiny bit dirty. 

-

Eddie had opted for lemongrass, that evening. Taken it off the little soap dish Richie’s dad had fixed to the wall next to the bath, and held it up to Richie with a smile. All posed like a catalogue girl; trying to make him giggle. A dim snort was all he got. 

Richie was perched on the toilet seat with a pink towel over his hips and a tension wired across his jaw. It had been a struggle even to sway him to do that - he’d been whining to Eddie from the other side of the door with drool on his chin, insisting he couldn’t do it, for almost fifteen minutes. Said his hands were all numb, his tie was stuck, his legs had stopped working - anything to get him out of undressing. 

“Your legs work just fine, Daffodil. They’ll work better without your pants weighing ‘em down,” Eddie had said firmly, cheek pressed against the wood. He felt Maggie watching from the foot of the stairs. 

“Spaghe-tti, you don’t understand - it’s gross, it’s really gross.”

“Nothing gross, I told you, I promise. Bubbles will be so high, they’ll be tickling your chin,” he went on. Richie’s voice sounded all slurred, and frantic too. Trying to tell him something with the tone of his words alone. 

“Not me being naked,” Richie had yelped at last. “Just me. I’m gross. Fucking gross. I don't want you to know it.” 

And nothing had ever made Eddie Kaspbrak so upset. 

When he was finally granted access, and swiped up the tears on Richie’s puffy cheeks with a lacy, green handkerchief, things were calmer. Becoming a little bit clearer that Eddie was not a threat - wasn't going to attack, or judge, or laugh. That Richie could trust Eddie with his body.

(That Richie could trust Eddie with his life.)

And that’s how he found himself dipping his nose under woolly pink bubble bath, just ten minutes later, while Eddie touched his hair and sang a Cranberries song to him. Blowing wobbly rings of air through the water, trying to hum along with the tune, staring down at where his knees peeked out. Safe. They looked like white camellia flowers. 

Always been a funny shape, his legs. Skinny at the shins and wide and curvy at the hips. All polka dotted with raspberry bruises, and eczema round his thighs (“got an itch, Rich?!” The other boys would giggle after gym), and all manner of tiny birthmarks and spots everywhere else. Eddie followed his line of vision and gave him a dainty tickle behind the ear. A touch like an old Victorian poem; one that said ‘I don’t think you’re gross’. One that told him he was actually quite beautiful. 

Richie nearly believed it. 

“When I was tiny and my mom gave me baths, she used to make me talk about things I liked very much,” he told Eddie matter-of-factly, as the smaller boy’s fingers worked grapefruit shampoo into his hair. Starting to relax for real now. “She called them my ‘gold treasures’ - doctor gave a funny name but we thought that was stupid. If I was distracted by something good I’d sit more still and she could get more done.” 

“Gold treasures, I like that,” Eddie said. His fingers pinched around Richie’s nose and swept his purply eyelids shut, so he could rinse. Every tiny swipe careful as dew. “Maybe we should do it then, ‘cause I’m giving you a bath. Do you have a gold treasure nowadays?” 

Richie’s tummy tightened against the water. Now that was something he really didn’t talk about with anybody, bar his parents. Just like his feelings and thoughts and friends, fixations - or rather, gold treasures - were tiny little flowers in themselves. Dinosaurs when he was seven: a lily of the valley. Egyptian myths when he was nine: a carnation. All printed in jasmine white ink, stowed into the deepest, curliest grooves of his heart. Personal.

And, somehow, sharing that with Eddie didn’t seem very scary at all anymore. 

“Sort of interested in space,” Richie said. A funny, gurgly little noise bloomed out through the gaps in his teeth as all the water rushed by his eyes. One that made Eddie giggle. “Space and planets and stars and things. Even went to the library for that shit, got a poster stuck on my wall. It’s like something out of a fairy book.” 

“Do you have a favourite planet in space?” Eddie asked calmly, combing his larkspur fingers over Richie’s ears. “I always liked the moon, although I don’t know if that counts. It seems like it’d be very wise. Very serene, very beautiful.” 

“More of a satellite than a planet - like a little add-on that spins around. It’s in the solar system though. Fifth biggest. I think it’s pretty too.” 

Eddie hummed in response. He’d finished with his cleaning and his head felt a lot clearer now - heart a lot lighter. Hoped Richie’s felt the same. “I think _you’re_ pretty,” he said, leaning over to drain the bath and tracing the hook-curve of Richie’s nose. Gave one of those tiny, lovely smiles. Like strawberry ice cream and wafers on the side - Eddie-smiles.

Oh Lord. 

This time Richie really did believe it. Now he was nice and clean and loved and listened to, the world seemed a whole lot brighter. It was the weekend and he was in love, and there was cheese and tomato pizza in the freezer. And him and Eddie could lay in the garden in their pyjamas all night, talking about the solar system and holding hands against the grass, and they’d have their first dance all wobbly in his bedroom. One big, yellow daydream. Bliss.

-

“I know what you mean, about feeling gross sometimes,” Eddie told him afterwards. Richie’s curls were dribbling bath water down his neck and they were sat cross-legged on the patio, with Maggie’s begonias tickling their elbows. Sun had almost set. “But you’re lovely, Rich, you always were.” 

Richie lay a damp head over Eddie’s shoulder, trying to curl himself up small, and watched the Beech tree sway. There was a tiny little ‘you’re alright, Richie’ in the bristle of its leaves. A sweet ‘well done’. He nodded at it.

"Thanks, Confetti. Just being a big baby. I can get like that sometimes,” he half-whispered. A small, curvy arm came circling around his back.

“You aren't a baby. I get like it too,” said Eddie. He was rubbing a little rose shape into Richie’s hip, kissing over it with his fingernails, and talking how you would to a very small and sleepy cat. “You know, when I was a kid, I used to think I was fat. My ma used to buy all my clothes too small and it got me thinkin’ silly stuff. I thought I might be gross too.”

Fucking Hell.

Richie cocked his head to give Eddie a once-over. He could see the strawberry, bandaid knees peeking out of the shorts he’d borrowed, and the tangerine cheeks puffed up with breath. Moles on his forearms and a silver spiral in his t shirt where his tummy stretched against it. Richie thought he looked a bit like a faerie, or a pixie. Running about in the woods with no shoes on and mending doves’ broken wings. Something from deep in the earth.

Something like a flower.

He lay a hand over Eddie’s thigh, slow to give him time to protest. Still not quite used to touching people like this - not without them laughing at him - but it still felt like magic. Still felt like home.

“Eddie-spaghetti,” Richie said very clearly. “To me, you are the most beautiful. Never gross, big or small. You’re good and pretty like...apple pie -” he curved his gaze upwards. The sun was gone for good now and something else was shyly curled up in its place. Winking at them both like a little, white fox. Perfect.

“To me, you are the moon,” he finished.

After this it was silent. Silvery. For a bit. 

That was the very first time he saw Eddie cry. Not blotchy or spluttering or snotty, like Richie might have been in his place, not noisy and pink. Just a very pale garland around the brown of his eyes - a disc of something watery. More like a halo than anything else.

Angel, angel, angel.

When Eddie’s ice-cream-cone lips came arching open, and his eyes up to Richie’s, nothing ugly came out. No sob. No gasp. No ‘god, you're fucking weird’.

Instead, only a silken, sweetpea question. It was, “Richie, will you be my boyfriend?” 

And, naturally, this is when Richie started to cry too. Both boys’ cheeks shining pink and eyes starting to trickle free. Like shrinking violets, wound into the dark between concrete cracks; breeze sending them cartwheeling into each other. Tickling with purple-tipped petals and kissing, kissing, kissing in the quiet black.

"You betcha, my spaghetti," Richie whimpered. "I'll always be your boyfriend."

That was how he properly gave his answer; kissing. A buttercream kiss on the lips, that let daffodils and sunflowers and daisies shiver up around their knees, and roughly translated to yes. He let Eddie see their little bouquet - Hell, he even sort of wanted him to. What was the point of hiding it anymore? What was the point of being alone? 

Maybe he always would be - a bit alone. That was who he was. Maybe he’d always be an easy target, and have a wonky nose, and struggle to read more than a sentence. Maybe he’d always be scared.

But, regardless, he’d always be Eddie’s. And really that was what he’d been fingernail-digging for all along. Not a comicbook superhero to save him, all caped in blue and yellow, not somebody to change him entirely. Just somebody to hold his hand through it all. 

And Richie had that now. Butterflying through the pale dips of his fingers and stroking the skin below his thumbs, until the end of time.


	13. the daisy chain for richie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> richie and eddie have found peace.

The barrens are brimming with curly, purple crocuses this morning.

They’ve come in little love-heart-bunches; curving out from the blue shade of the trees and fencing the rivers. Kissing your ankles and waving at grass. Mostly start to grow when the sun pales and the thunder rolls in, when the air is crisp, and when the birds are quiet. Fall. And this year, they’ve just so started blooming on the morning of Halloween.

Richie always forgets his coat. These flowers are sometimes something of a tiny, petalled alarm to him. Spring up by his shins and give a gentle little bow there. One that says “look after yourself, Richie!” But still, he finds himself shivering - pale, iris arms knocking against his ribs and knees tracing spirals against the sky. It’s happening right this very moment, as we speak. Shivering.

His eyelashes are trying to thatch out the harsh white light as he looks up above him. There's something sweet in the air today; something that tastes like apples. Richie’s mom used to tell him that meant faeries weren’t far, and he’d race to the bottom of the garden with his fingers crossed in his dungaree pockets, desperate to get a tiny, pink glimpse of one. But just now, he thinks he’s got a different explanation. One even lovelier, one far more worth wishing for. It comes in the form of Eddie Kaspbrak’s fingers.

They’re curling and dipping at a hundred miles an hour. Forming all kinds of different freckly, pink shapes - Richie reckons he’d be brilliant on guitar - and keeping his cottony wrists steady all the while. Making a daisy chain. Richie’s head is tucked into his lap below, clean curls vine-crawling around the side of his thigh and thick with special, cherry shampoo from his mother (after Eddie told Maggie that her son had cried and called himself ‘gross’ that fateful night, she’d gone shopping in a frenzy). Teased into frizzy little shapes against the blue of Eddie’s jeans, with the dandelions. They're sitting together in sweet, scarlet-cheeked silence.

Five months. It's been five months since Eddie asked Richie if he was alright, on the playing field. They are very safe; they are happy.

“Richie, they’re going all shaky again,” Eddie says softly, lowering his flowers against Richie’s nose and shooting him a little look. “Would you stop thinking so hard for a minute?! Makes them really hard to weave.” He knocks a knuckle against his boyfriend’s temple - the curvy, pretty one with its tea-coloured mole. Daisies won't stop squirming in his hands.

Richie shuffles his shoulders around their pillow, letting off a low, happy whir and springing a few more daisies for Eddie out of the ground. Heart wood-pecking against his ribs. “Sorry, buttercup. Jus’ feeling pretty good,” he says. He tilts his lips up like a newborn rose and blows the smoky hair out of his eyes.

He's changed a little bit, over the year. Green-and-pink braces wired clumsily across his teeth, brand new glasses with orange stripes up the sides (“Oh my God - they are so pretty, Mom! We have to get ‘em Mom!” He’d gushed in the optician’s). Obvious changes. But there are little ones too - right at the very tips of his petals, the crook of his stem. Like how Richie’s face is heart-shaped, and it’s growing right into its pink and round and healthy glory. His shoulders perk up straight instead of slouching low, and his limbs are looking more and more like limbs, and less like chewed-down pencil crayons, every day. Richie is growing up, and he’s getting better.

He's blossoming.

“Well, I am glad about that,” Eddie replies, poking his blue-stained tongue through his teeth as he fiddles with a stem. He has noticed these little changes with each of their arrivals and gilded them gold in his head, over and over again. “But you just relax, okay, my love? Just chill out right here. All the excitement’s gotta wait for trick-or-treating!”

That makes Richie’s heart flutter - the grass combs through his hair and his teeth curve out like foxglove buds. For the first time in fifteen miserable years, he is spending Halloween Night with his friends. His best friends. “Ah, Spaghetti’s got smarts!" He exclaims, shrinking down further against Eddie's legs and peering up at him tenderly. Eddie stops his winding for a moment to stare right back.

Special eyes. That's what he uses. They see that Richie's nose is running and it's stained red at the end, with the scratch of the cold. And that his hair's got a knotty lump right in its parting. Moth-bite hole in the collar of his t shirt and a yellow butterfly sticker - “swallowtail!” Richie had labelled excitedly - pressed against the damp beneath his left ear. Silly. Yet, God, he's beautiful.

“Course I do,” Eddie whispers. His chain is finished and his hands are calm. A blackbird whistles softly somewhere. "Swept you off your feet, didn’t I, Daffy?”

Richie props himself up and leans his head close to Eddie’s hands. Like a puppy trying to ask for a little scratch between its ears, nose all wrinkly and eyes squinting tight. Eddie, who is becoming rather fluent in Richie’s shy language by now, complies, and slips the daisy chain over his head. Tumbles down past the sticky-out, curly parts of his ears, and rides up over the frames of his glasses. Cute.

“How ‘bout you?” Richie says, wobbly fingers flying up to try and adjust. A half-dead petal has wriggled free and almost lost itself in one of his ringlets, and grey-green leaves are collapsing everywhere. He smells of cedar. “Did I sweep you off your teeny tiny feet?”

Eddie giggles. “Doing it every day, Rich.”

Richie believes this entirely. It’s a little bit hard to imagine - his words making the blood rush to Eddie’s head. The wonky, dark red grooves of his palms against Eddie’s skin, making it prickle and glow. He’s blind as a bat, and never runs all the laps in gym, and cried on his seventh grade picture day. Far below people like Eddie - far below angels. But, after all, nothing in Richie’s life has ever seemed plausible. Giant, angry trees shoot through the floors when he’s sad, and boys like Eddie Kaspbrak kiss him in carpets of bluebells, and the air always reeks like apples.

“Love you,” he says quietly.

Eddie tugs a dry, yellowed leaf out of Richie’s hair and tickles it against his nostrils. “Hiya, Romeo. I love you too.”

Richie’s fifteen and he knows, now, that the world doesn’t make any sense, and that there is so much hope in that. So much magic. He only has to trust Eddie. Has to trust that he is loved, and lovely, and worthy of many, happy things. He feels Eddie stroking daisy petals through his hair, laying him back down against the warmth of his thigh, and kissing the dark brown line where his curls meet the pearl of his forehead. And he thinks he hasn’t only found an angel, but he’s starting to feel like one too. He's happy. He's heavenly.

Angel, angel, angel.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> have to reupload this as there was a glitch and now i lost the big gay speech i wrote at the end but!!!! enjoy this last chapter and please know i am so grateful for all of your support and love on this fic. feeling very proud and much more confident about my writing coming out the other end of it! :') more stuff coming soon!!

**Author's Note:**

> my first shot at an au! please tell me what you think!  
> tumblr - ratchie  
> twitter - wlwrichie


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